


leave a light on

by elliebell (Naladot)



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Conversations, Coping, Depression, Friendship, Gen, Late Night Conversations, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Slice of Life, Some references to disordered eating, Some references to religion, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-09 22:12:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16457969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naladot/pseuds/elliebell
Summary: No conversation sounds quite as stupid as one that starts off with “I know I’m still going to work and taking care of myself, more or less, but I’m pretty unhappy about it.”Jae, mild depression, and late night conversations with a good friend.





	leave a light on

**Author's Note:**

> I have a whole thing about "Talking To" and its depiction of loneliness & mild depression, and another whole thing about Jae writing "Talking To," and somehow this fic happened. As always, this is fiction, and shouldn't be taken as any kind of assertion about the people it's based on.
> 
> Special thanks to Shida for help with the title~

* * *

 

 

 

 

He takes the subway, rather than a taxi, in part because he wants to see if anyone recognizes him. Don’t judge him, okay? It’s a terrible side effect of the life of an artist: you become an affirmation junkie, desperate for your next hit. Jae tries to suppress the craving—his YouTube channel is an strategic promotional venture of its own, after all, and so what if he wants anonymous people on the internet to tell him he’s funny? It’s not like anyone notices him swaying in the middle of the subway car, anyway, one hand gripping the hanging plastic handle and the other holding up his phone. He’s sort of looking at it, scrolling absently through Instagram posts of people he went to high school with. Everyone is so fucking happy online—and Jae is as guilty of this as anyone—but after the fourth photo of friendquaintances’ weddings and the sixth photo of friendquaintances’ worldwide travels, he pockets his phone. Then looks around,  _ not _ to see if anyone recognized him—fine, okay, maybe just to check—but everyone else on the subway is looking at their phones, so the answer to  _ that _ question is: Jae’s still a loser.

 

Jae turns to face the doors and looks at his own reflection in the dark glass. He wouldn’t expect anyone to recognize him, not like this, with dark circles under his eyes and his fried hair hidden under a hoodie. He listens to people talking around him, pieces of conversations in Chinese from the people next to him, Korean on the other side, English over by the next set of doors. Rests his head against the plastic siding that separates the seats from the doors. Pulls out his phone again. No notifications. Puts it back.

 

The car stops and the doors open, like they’re exhaling a long-held breath. Jae streams out with the other passengers, pushing his way to the turnstiles and out into the station. Soon he is free of the crowd, wandering alone down the tiled hallways. He puts one earbud in and turns up the music, then skips three songs, and finally pulls the earbud out again. No use. Stupid distraction, anyhow.

 

He stops at a drink stand and orders a fruit smoothie. It’s healthy, sort of. His manager would applaud him, if he were here to do so. But he’s not and neither is anyone else, so Jae mentally congratulates himself on a choice well-made, and wanders up and out of the subway station, sipping cold kiwi slush through the straw.

 

Another night in Seoul. Twenty-six years old. Jae puts his other hand in his sweatshirt pocket, and starts walking.

 

The troublesome thing about depression is that half the time he’s so terribly fine that he doesn’t even notice it sneaking up on him. At least with a cold, you get a week’s worth of warning, a scratchy throat and sneezing and whatnot. With depression he always thinks he’s a real model of self-actualization until it occurs to him that his gloomy outlook on the universe is complemented by insomnia, lethargy, and lack of appetite, at which point he calls up the company-contracted counselor with a weary “yo, got any openings?” and starts praying to a God he isn’t 100% confident actually listens. Look at the awful going-ons in the world, anyway—God’s got bigger issues to deal with than picking Jae up out of a slump. This is the opposite of everything he’s heard about God in church, but it  _ feels _ true, a lot more true than the idea that anyone’s got time to notice one pathetic guy out of millions struggling in semi-depression.

 

That’s the other troublesome thing: it’s never so bad as to make him cry out for help. Just a nuisance, a weight around his ankles—but he’s still swimming, isn’t he? No conversation sounds quite as stupid as one that starts off with “I know I’m still going to work and taking care of myself, more or less, but I’m pretty unhappy about it.” It sounds stupid even as he  _ thinks _ it—like damn, what kind of self-absorbed prick needs such constant attention that he plays  _ that _ card? But it’s true, and so he’s alone, with a kiwi slushie cup sweating water all over his jeans.

 

He should really pick up some bad coping habits. Might help. But cigarette smoke makes him cough and his eyes water uncontrollably, he’s allergic to alcohol, the smell of weed makes him sick and JYPE forbids it and dozens of other substances in his contract anyway, he has zero interest in weight-lifting, the very thought of using Tinder or any of its celebrity-exclusive variants gives him an anxiety attack, and  _ Fight Club _ always seemed a little anti-productive to him. That leaves more obscure options like gambling (imagine him at a casino,  _ lol _ , nevermind) or extreme motorcycle racing (potentially decent, but he’d chicken out) or  _ mukbang _ (which, no). So he’s left with the decidedly vanilla options of wandering city streets at night, playing video games for hours, and perfecting the fake chipper tone of his voice when he says “Yep, I’m fine!” with the accompanying stab of pain in his chest. Sometimes he fully grasps why his college friends told him—with love— _ you’re really not cool. _

 

He tosses the unfinished smoothie into a bus stop trash can and waits for the pedestrian crossing light to change. Across the street is the riverside park, and standing there under the streetlight is a couple. Even in the dark, he can tell they’re wearing couple clothes. The girl keeps staring up at the guy like he’s a lightbulb and she’s a very desperate moth. The guy keeps skirting his hand closer to the girl’s ass, like they’re not in public. All this in the twenty seconds of waiting for the light to change. The guy finally does squeeze the girl’s ass, earning an indignant squeal, but then she kisses him, so it’s all just foreplay. The light changes. The couple crosses the street quickly, avoiding eye contact, eager to get back home. Jae continues on, annoyed and alone.

 

He passes more people as he walks to the river. A group of men sit with beer and snacks at a set of tables beside a snack shop, laughing in the slow, slightly drunk way of men who’ve lived a lot of years and have no reason to rush home. People zoom by on inline skates. A group of girls pass him on bikes, reflectors blinking in the low light. Jae keeps walking.

 

He finally finds a place to sit, obscured in some reedy overgrowth, and pulls a bag of crackers out of his pocket. The city lights reflect off the water. It’s oddly calming, him alone with the river stretched out in front of him. He looks at it. He doesn’t pull out his phone. Time passes by as one unmeasured glob, neither fast nor slow, Jae in the center, trying not to feel anything for once in his mediocre life.

 

Some time later—maybe an hour, maybe ten minutes, he doesn’t bother to look—footsteps sound behind him. He turns and looks and it’s Brian, a sheepish smile on his face.

 

“Can I join you?” he asks.

 

Jae thought everyone was busy tonight, so he blinks for a second, trying to make sense of Brian showing up here. Maybe it’s a mirage? Time-traveling Brian? But a second later, Brian is still in front of him. Very real.

 

Jae scoots over on the concrete step. “What are you doing down here?”

 

Brian sits down, hands in the pockets of his jacket. “Honestly? Looking for you.”

 

“And you  _ found _ me?”

 

“You, uh,” Brian squints at him, “Never turned off location sharing on Snapchat?”

 

“Really?” Jae looks up at the sky and laughs. “That’s creepy as hell, dude.”

 

“Yeah. I know.”

 

“No shame, huh?”

 

“No shame man.” Brian gestures with his pocket-hand to the half-finished bag of chips. “That all you’ve eaten today?”

 

“Of course not.”

 

“What else did you eat?”

 

“Kiwi slushie.”

 

“Healthy.”

 

Jae just shrugs. “Wasn’t hungry.”

 

It’s the truth. He’s seen all kinds of eating disorders during his trainee years, even in college, and he knows the difference. His problem is that he just  _ forgets _ , hours passing by, and then the gnawing stab of pain in his stomach feels normal, and the idea of eating seems painful. Maybe he  _ does _ have a bad coping habit. 

 

A lame one, of course.

 

They sit quietly for a few minutes. Jae pulls out his phone and checks Snapchat, where he does in fact have location sharing turned on. He turns it off, earning a light laugh from Brian, and then they lapse into silence again.

 

Brian clears his throat. “Are you going to get mad at me if I say I’m worried about you?”

 

“Maybe.” Jae keeps his eyes focused on the water. He refuses to admit how those words make him a little dizzy, like the ground tilting in the wrong direction, or a plane just before turbulence gets bad. Sometimes he spends so much time trying to get people to notice him, that when they finally do, he wants nothing more to crawl into a hole and hibernate for the next five billion years. He wants to stick out, but not too much. He wants to be noticed, but he feels embarrassed if his friends actually notice anything is wrong. He wants to be famous, and he doesn’t want any haters. His life problems are mostly self-inflicted.

 

“Okay, then. I’m  _ concerned _ .”

 

“Dude. You sound like my dad.”

 

Brian sighs and rests his elbows on his knees, running his hands through his hair and looking over at Jae. “I’m trying to help you, okay? What can I do?”

 

“There’s nothing to do if there’s no problem.”

 

“Jae.”

 

“Look, okay.” Jae pulls off his glasses and rubs his eyes. “I’m unhappy for literally no reason. I have an amazing career, a great band, a solid life, and I can tell you all that and still go home and think about how no one likes me and I’m a sorry excuse for a musician and generally a failure. So, it’s just like—” He shoves his glasses back on and looks at Brian. “Stupid.”

 

Brian looks back at him for a long moment. They sit like that, listening to the sounds of cicadas and city traffic and a low, steady quiet underneath. Jae looks away.

 

“Do you remember,” Brian says eventually, “When we were trainees and I was thinking about quitting?”

 

Jae nods, thinking back to those days. It’s funny how something will send him right back to those moments, like boxed milk tea or a Fall Out Boy track popping up in his iTunes. He hasn’t thought about Brian wanting to quit in a long time. Where would their band be, if he had? “Yeah. I remember.”

 

“And who talked me out of it?”

 

Jae rolls his eyes and grins over at Brian. “Some kid you  _ hated _ .”

 

“I didn’t hate you,” Brian says, putting his hands up. “I didn’t like you, but I certainly didn’t hate you.”

 

“I felt very neutral.”

 

“Yet you still took the time to tell me not to give up on my dreams.”

 

“Not gonna lie, that’s something called strategy. I had some schemes for my future band which included you. I’m a Slytherin at heart.”

 

“You’re definitely a Hufflepuff, but, sure, okay.” Brian laughs. “Do you remember what you said, though?”

 

“Hufflepuffs are cool,” Jae protests. “What do you think you are?”

 

“Ravenclaw, obviously. Seriously, do you remember?”

 

Jae closes his eyes and sighs. “I said, don’t give up on this just because it feels shitty right now. Stay or go, either way, you’ll be fine. But don’t make a decision based on fear.”

 

“It was good advice.”

 

“Why are you bringing this up now?”

 

“Because—I don’t know. Based on what you’ve said the past few years, you’re afraid to admit when you’re struggling.”

 

Jae looks over at Brian again. He’s waiting patiently, the model friend, always the rock on which the whole band is built. Jae shoves his hands back into his pockets.

 

“It’s, um. Sometimes hard to talk to you about.”

 

Brian’s brows knit together. “Why?”

 

“Because you’ve got your shit together, Brian.” Jae laughs. “Finished your degree and turned into JYP Entertainment’s star lyricist all at the same time. I didn’t even get out of bed until noon today.”

 

“It’s not a competition.”

 

“It’s always a competition.”

 

“Yeah? And if you remember, you were already more famous than the rest of us when you came in as a trainee.”

 

“Reality show doesn’t count.”

 

“Maybe don’t undervalue your own accomplishments?” Brian knocks his elbow against Jae’s arm and gives him a small, almost sad smile. “All I’m trying to say is, you don’t need to apologize for struggling.”

 

Something about this knocks the air right out of Jae’s chest. 

 

He sits there, staring at the water. Listening to his heart pound in his ears.

 

“Yeah, I do,” he says quietly. Looks over at Brian. “Eventually, y’all are going to get fed up with me.”

 

Brian sighs. “Maybe?” He nudges Jae again. “So what, though? I can tell you this, right now. Even if that happens, we’re not going anywhere. This band? It’s a ride or die deal.”

 

Jae takes a deep breath against the pressure in his chest. Friends—or family, if he’s being honest, as cheesy as it sounds. He’s spent a lot of years desperately trying to convince people to let him in. Sometimes he forgets that he got himself blood brothers on accident.

 

Just like that the gloom clears. His mind sobers up and he can see it, his life spread out behind him, a twisting road of highs and lows leading to this moment, him sitting here at the side of the Han River with a friend who went out of his way to come here just to make sure he was okay. Tears smart in his eyes. But Park Jaehyung ain’t a crier, so help him God.

 

“That’s a good speech, man.”

 

“Yeah, I know.” Brian grins. “JYP Entertainment’s star lyricist, huh?”

 

“Shut up.”

 

“You said it, I’m just repeating your words.”

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 

Brian claps a hand on Jae’s shoulder, warm and strong. “Come on. Let’s go eat.”

 

 

 

 

_ end. _


End file.
